Earth Fare, The Longest Walk, General Von Bissing and the Birds

Yesterday’s dog paw prints having faded into a nice light glaze all over our dark wooden floor, it is time to move on to other topics of conversation, although, for the record, No-no and Bad Dog kept up quite a trail of things for me to rescue yesterday, also!

• Earth Fare

This weekend, Mark and I had the chance to go into an Earth Fare supermarket for the first time.  Earth Fare labels itself as “the Healthy Supermarket.”  The label “organic” is pretty much standard throughout the store.  It had a large selection of teas – I got a tin of berry green tea for Christmas, so I have been trying some different teas from time to time – I can brew one cup of tea, add 1 teaspoon of real suger and have a small treat for the cost of 1/3 point on the Weightwatchers system.  Its produce section, which was all organic fruits and vegetables, looked really good too.  We bought a few of them, some dry roasted cashews (the store sold them in bulk containers and you scooped out what you wanted), a fresh-baked loaf of sour dough bread and some wheat crackers.  The finishing touch, though, was the discovery at the check-out counter that the store sells what I consider to be the very best apple juice in the world – Martinelli’s Gold Medal 100% apple juice.  Kayla agrees with me.  Mark and I bought 16 bottles on Sunday; we are now down to only 4.  If you ever come across this apple juice, you really need to try it! 

• The Longest Walk

I walked into Kayla’s bedroom the other day, to note the pairs of shoes scattered throughout the floor rather than sitting in the closet, and started to wonder irritably why it seemed so hard for her to walk the two feet from where the shoes were to the closet to put them in there – until I walked into my bedroom and noticed the three pairs of shoes I had sitting on the floor in our bedroom by my bureau drawer rather than in my closet.  The longest walk for both of us appears to be the path from the bedroom to the closet door.  I really should do better, since No-no and Bad Dog have been known to snatch shoes to chew when no handkerchiefs, socks or other items of clothing are available.   Other long walks for me appear to be the walk from the kitchen counter to the trash can with the empty diet coke can, and the walk from wherever the clothes were folded to the place where they are supposed to reside normally. 

Have you ever lost the TV remote and spent thirty minutes looking for it rather than walk the three feet over to the TV to turn it on?  I did that the other day.  I used to think it was just an amusing peculiarity of human nature but during this latest TV remote search I realized it has now become a necessity.  About 15 minutes into the search I walked over to the TV to turn it on manually, only to discover that, while I could turn it on and off manually, I was completely unable to do anything else without the remote.  There wasn’t even a channel switch!  That added a new urgency to the search for the remote, which was ultimately discovered underneath a couch cushion. 

• General Baron Von Bissing and the Birds

General Baron Von Bissing was the German (well, really Prussian) military governor of occupied Belgium during World War I.  As such, he was responsible for ordering the executions of dozens if not hundreds of individuals, and the deportation of thousands of Belgians to Germany to work in forced labor situations.  (I am researching his life as best I can, in my copious free time, in connection with a book I would like to write.)  I was looking through the newspaper archives of the New York Times last night (they go back to 1851, and articles from 1851 to 1922 are in the public domain, ie., they are free) and came across a one paragraph article about a peculiar order of the general’s.  In the middle of the occupation, General Von Bissing issued an order stating that the “artifical blinding” of song birds was forbidden in Belgium as a “cruelty” that would not be tolerated.  Now, it’s not that I disagree with the sentiment, but for that practice to bother a military governor who acted as he did with respect to people just seems odd.  I also wondered why anyone would want to deliberately make a song bird blind and why that was a big enough problem in the middle of the war to require an edict of its very own. 

Well, that’s enough for now.  I need to complete a “discission” (Kayla tried to say “discussion” and managed to blend the words “discussion” and “decision” instead) with Kayla about the necessity to get her hair and teeth brushed quickly at this point.

Have a great day everyone!  

Have a great day everyone!